As mentioned many, many times before in this blog, I like to ride and race bikes. I’m certainly not the fastest guy around, and I’m not all that on top of my training or nutrition, but the rush I get from racing bikes means more than whatever I’m letting hold myself back. I like to think of bike racing as a cathartic self-prescribed pain exercise. When the gun goes off, it’s all fun and games. You get on good wheels, follow the fast guys into the singletrack, and enjoy the first 10 minutes at an uncomfortably fast pace through tight and twisty trails. This is the section of the race I signed up for, the first 10 minutes. Those first 10 minutes are fun, and you can usually get away with pushing harder than usual. After that, when the pain starts to set in, it really gets into the masochist side of things, and survival mode kicks in. From here, you find out how well your body can recover and whether or not the next hour will be pitiful with a side of pain, or painful with a side of fun.
Anyhow, this past weekend was a nice little community hill climb event on the bottom of Galbraith Mountain. The ten of us who participated were to climb ~1000 vertical feet entirely on singletrack, with a few little sprinkles of downhill recovery within. I’m not very good at sustained power, but I can excel when there are a few seconds of recovery between efforts. This climb was perfect in that sense, as the first half of the race had lots of little dips and technical moments where I could stop pedaling. The second half of the course was steeper and not my specialty, but with the time I gained in the first half, I was able to take the win! The field wasn't big, only 12 people showed up, but Andy was hot on my heels and provided a lot of motivation to keep the pace high. Additionally, I also got my first KOM of 2023. This whole year, I’ve just seen my KOMs fall left and right, so it was nice to snag a few back.
Can I talk about KOMs? Or at least Strava. I remember when Strava made a big deal about detecting eBikes and vehicles on segments, but it seems like they’ve given up recently. More than ever, I notice riders aren’t setting their rides as eBike rides, and Strava fails to recognize them. Vehicles are another thing, and it should be even more obvious that the ride has stopped when a rider is going 40mph up a 12% grade with a heart rate in the 70s. Also, to flag eBike and vehicle rides, you must go onto their desktop site instead of being able to do it from the app. Get better, Strava, this is getting embarrassing.
But hey, maybe I’m just complaining because they increased their price by 70% recently without many notable improvements lately. The increase was probably just to pay for the embarrassment that was ‘Camp Strava Week’ or whatever influencer-infested nightmare that was. Sorry for the negativity, but if you want fluff, Outside.com is all fluff articles. Thinly veiled advertisements set up as social progress pieces that really leave a tangy taste in your mouth. Anyways, I’m stuck with writer's block at work, it might be because I’m just not all that passionate about water and wastewater treatment, but I am passionate about money and having a roof over my head, so I better get back to it.
You crushed it